


Fender Bender

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Dolls Is Injured, F/M, Light Angst, Wynonna Angsts, very light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 19:30:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11927712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: “He’s gonna be okay,” Waverly whispers.  “Wynonna, you know that.”But she doesn’t.  She doesn’t know that.  She doesn’t knowanythingbecause she’s never seen him this hurt before.  For a long time, all she can see are the tubes and bandages and flecks of dried blood not quite cleaned away.  She’s a little scared to touch him, to so much as breathe too hard near him.





	Fender Bender

The doctors or saying something but none of it makes sense—they’re saying words like _massive trauma_ and _internal bleeding_ and _miraculous_ , but how can it be miraculous when he’s lying there, battered and bruised and with a tube down his throat and there are tears threatening and blurring her vision.  Of all the things to take him out—of all the terrible, horrifying things that have come for them—it can’t be a _car accident_.  He barely even looks like him.  His eyes are swollen shut, his face is half covered with bandages and a splint, one arm stabilized in a sling against his chest, leg in a cast.  She’s peering at him through a window as the doctors talk and talk and talk.

“Can I…” she chokes, unable to finish.

“He’s stable, you can go in,” one of them says, quiet and gentle.

Before she gets the chance, she hears her name and turns, finds her sister, face pale as she rushes to her.  “I came as soon as I heard, oh, Wynonna,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around her.

Limp and dazed, Wynonna can barely bring herself to return the embrace.  “I have to—I have to go in,” she stammers, hears herself stammer in a distant way.  Waverly grabs her hand and squeezes her fingers and nods her towards the door and suddenly—suddenly she’s _scared_.  From the outside, it’s somehow safer.  It’s almost unreal.  Somehow, stepping through that doorway makes it that much more real.  She squeezes Waves’ fingers as they cross the threshold, steady beating barely registering as she steps closer to his bed.  She can barely hear _anything_ over her own blood rushing in her ears.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Waverly whispers.  “Wynonna, you know that.”

But she doesn’t.  She doesn’t know that.  She doesn’t know _anything_ because she’s never seen him this hurt before.  For a long time, all she can see are the tubes and bandages and flecks of dried blood not quite cleaned away.  She’s a little scared to touch him, to so much as breathe too hard near him.

“He looks so—” she bites her lip and shakes her head, doesn’t want to say the word _helpless_ as her free hand clings to the rail on the side of his bed.  Swallowing thickly, she tears her eyes away from his face to look at Waves and her tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.  “I—um,” she closes her eyes and wills herself to take a deep breath.  “I’m gonna go get us some coffee.”

Waves opens her mouth to say something but seems to think better of it.  “Okay,” she says gently.  “I’ll stay with him.”

She barely manages a quick _thanks_ before she’s goddamn _fleeing_ from that room.  Instead of going in search of coffee, she pushes her way into a bathroom to freak out in the privacy of a stall, as one does.  Plunking down onto the toilet seat, she hunches over and wraps her arms around her knees and tries to keep her breathing even as the tears she’d held back come pouring out.  Her nails dig into the palms of her hands as she struggles to quiet her hiccupping sobs.  She just can’t get the way he’d looked out of her head.  Removed from the room, she thought it’d be easier, but it’s not.  She wants to be by his side, but she also, emphatically, does not want to see him like that anymore—a realization that hits her with waves on waves of guilt because she _knows_ he’d be there with her.

It’s that thought that makes her straighten and wipe her face and force herself to refocus.  She takes several long, slow but faltering breaths until she’s not crying anymore, until she’s some semblance of calm.  She splashes her face with cold water and avoids the eyes of the woman who’s washing her hands next to her.  Her face is blotchy and red and, well, she can’t really help that too much.  Wrinkling her nose at her own reflection, she goes in search of one of those terrible coffee machines.

Waves is right where she left her, holding Dolls’ unbandaged hand with both of hers.  Her face is grave and worried, and she jumps when Wynonna clears her throat.  “Coffee, babygirl,” she says.

“Thank you,” she replies with a sympathetic look.  “Do you want a minute alone?”

“Yeah,” she says without thinking, staring at the pillow just over Dolls’ shoulder.  As Waverly passes her, she touches her arm, lingering and tentative.  She closes the door on her way out.  Chewing her lip, Wynonna draws a chair up to his bedside and whispers, “Hey.”  Gingerly, she lets her fingers cover his.  “I’m right here.”  Her eyes prickle again and she takes a steadying breath.  “I swear to God, Dolls, you better make it through this.”  The silence is suffocating and she can’t help but continue, “I’ll be right here, though, until you do—because I’m gonna kick your _ass_ when you wake up.  How many times have you bitched at me for not wearing a seatbelt, huh?”

For a moment, she can’t keep going—it’s too much, and she’s too scared, and he’s too hurt.  She takes a sip of bad coffee.

“You—you goddamn dumbass,” she sobs, setting the little paper cup on the floor to scrub at her eyes.  “I am so pissed at you.  I say no more dying, so you go and do the second-best thing.”  Unsurprisingly, he offers zero defense.  “It’s just—I just can’t lose you too.”  Her throat feels tight and raw and she swallows painfully, voice barely above a whisper, “So, you know, I’ll be here, and you better wake up, because I l—”

The door swings open and she clamps her mouth shut, coloring as Jeremy flies into the room.  “How’s he doing?” he asks, breathless and carrying a paper bag.

“That looks suspicious,” she mutters with a frown.  “He’s… stable.”

“He’s overdue for a dose,” he explains.  She looks pointedly at the window and waits for him to pull the blinds.  As he comes closer, she squeezes Dolls’ hand.  “I need his wrist,” he says softly.  She flips his hand over, watches as Jeremy presses the needle into one of the veins there.  As the plunger is pushed down, she feels his hand twitch in hers.  “It’s an involuntary reaction.”  Something about those words make the tears start flowing again, and she tries to turn away before he can see but he says hurriedly, “No, no, hey, listen—he’s got accelerated healing—he’s basically a quarter-speed Wolverine.”

She’s not sure why, but it just makes her cry harder.  Before she knows it, he’s holding her, albeit a little clumsily.  “This poor fucking moron,” she chokes out.

“Hey, he’s made it through worse.  Just you watch, he’ll be up and boring—uh, fascinating us with sports stats in no time,” he assures her.

Huffing a watery laugh, she shakes her head. 

She stays with him through that first night, talking and falling silent at turns.  The comings and goings of the others sort of gets lost.  She knows they sit or hover or pace, but she’s so focused on watching for any sign of consciousness that she barely even pays attention.  When she can’t keep talking about how pissed she is, when she’s alone, she talks about traipsing around Europe, about picking up odd jobs here and there, about catching freight trains in the US just to say she’d done it—also because she was flat broke and couldn’t afford a bus ticket.  She supposes it helps, if only because it keeps her busy.  This isn’t like Haught—this isn’t supernatural, she can’t threaten it away.  He’s hurt and she can’t fix it.

She fills up the silence so she doesn’t have to think about it.

Halfway through the next day, Doc brings her coffee and a dubious-looking burger from the cafeteria.  She’s exhausted, realizes only then that she stayed up all night as she takes a bite and, for the first time in hours, looks away from Dolls.  “Are you gonna tell me he’s gonna be fine?” she asks when she sees the way Doc’s watching her.

“Wynonna, Dolls is the strongest man we know.  It would take more than a mere car accident to take him out,” he says calmly.  “Stubborn sonuvabitch is gonna pull through.”

She lets her eyes fall shut when he squeezes her shoulders and drops a quick peck to the top of her head.  “He better, ‘cause I’m gonna kill him myself when he does,” she mumbles weakly.

“You could no more hurt him than he could hurt you,” he points out.

Frowning, she says, “I dunno, I’m still pretty mad.”

For a while longer, Doc sits with her, but eventually he makes some comment about needing a smoke and leaves her alone.  She’s not sure if she’s more grateful for his presence or his absence, but she takes a few more half-hearted bites of her burger before pushing it aside in favor of the coffee that’s gone cold.  Jeremy swings in a bit later—she’s not even sure how long, she barely even notices until he asks how bossman is doing—and she blinks up at him.

“Um, he’s being a huge drama queen, as per usual,” she sighs, watching him administer his shot.

“Yep, that’s Dolls for you,” he mutters thoughtlessly, stuffing his syringe in his pocket as the nurse comes in to check his vitals or whatever she’s doing.

“That looked dangerous,” she whispers.

“It was probably dangerous,” he responds.  “And definitely not proper syringe-handling procedure.”  After the nurse is gone, she watches him toss the syringe into a sharps container.  “So, how’re you holding up?”

“I’m probably not gonna cry again, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says, chewing at her thumb nail.

“No, that’s not what I—not that it wouldn’t be okay if you did, you know, you shouldn’t bottle things up, it only makes it worse in the long run,” he rambles.  “But, like, are you okay?”

He’s so goddamn _earnest_ about it that she feels like she may actually cry again.  Swallowing the lump in her throat, she says, “I’m fine.  I mean—I’ll be better when this guy… yanno, but I’m fine.”

His only response is a small, crooked smile.

The rest of the day is kind of a blur.  She talks, and it’s a little easier to let herself be distracted when other visitors come and go, and she barely lets go of his hand.  A few times, she thinks she feels his fingers move, can’t stop the way her heart races when she does.  At some point, she dozes off, elbow on the arm of her chair and chin in her hand.  Her dreams are muddled and confused, she feels like she’s searching for something or reaching for something but she can’t remember what it is.

When she wakes up to something stroking lightly against her knuckles, she thinks she’s still dreaming.  But then the beeping filters through and she shoots up and in the dim early-morning light she can see his eyes are open.  Something mangled, a sob or a laugh, bubbles up out of her as she launches out of the chair and, without thinking, presses her nose, then her lips to his temple.

“Don’t you _ever_ do anything like this ever again,” she hisses, punctuated by another quick kiss before she mashes the nurse’s call button.  “Ever.  Seriously.”

He’s not able to speak with that big tube in his mouth, but the way his eyebrow ticks upward speaks volumes enough.  He squeezes his fingers, though.

But then the nurses, and the doctors, and the talking.  She gets shuffled out of the room—she hangs on to his hand as long as she can before she’s ushered away.  Her feet seem to move on their own, carry her to the waiting room, where she finds Waverly leaning into Nicole’s shoulder.  Both nearly leap out of their chairs at her sudden appearance but she makes what she _hopes_ is a placating gesture. 

“He’s awake,” she says, lightness rising in her chest.  Waves knocks into her with a force that almost knocks the breath out of her and she coughs, “Okay, okay.”  She looks at Nicole, exaggeratedly incredulous, but she’s not buying it.

That’s fair.

She curls around her sister and hears her soft, “I told you he’d be okay.”

“I said he was awake, not doing backflips,” she mutters.

It feels like an eternity before the doctor comes and tells her she can go see him again.  While she’s walking back to the room, both of Waverly’s hands tight around one of hers, she starts to worry she was wrong or she made it up or maybe he’s not awake.  But then she’s in the doorway and he’s drinking water while the nurse jots something down.  He smiles at her, crooked and a little dopey.

“On a scale of one to Pluto, how high are you?” she asks, voice wavering as she inches closer.

“Not as high as I wish I were,” he says seriously.  His own voice is rough in a way that makes her ache.  “What, no flowers?” he asks, directed over her shoulder.

“Absolutely not—I had to clean up what was left of the SUV.  If anything, you owe _me_ flowers,” Nicole scoffs.

He cringes.

“Waves got you flowers, but you’ve been out for, like, six years, so they died,” Wynonna says with mock gravity.

“Nice try, but Nurse Stephanie already told me it’s been two days,” he replies.

“Spoilsport,” she frowns at the nurse, who smiles unrepentantly.  Since she’s had to deal with her practically growling every time she’s tried to convince her to go get some natural sunlight, Wynonna guesses it’s only fair.

She hangs back as Waverly steps up to his side, mumbling that she’s waiting until they’re gone so she has no witnesses for the hell she’s gonna rain down on him.  Awkwardly, careful not to jostle him, she hugs him and says, “I’m glad you’re okay, Dolls.”

“Hey, it’d take more than a fender bender to put me outta the game for good,” he replies as he wraps his good arm around her—Wynonna catches the way he winces and bites the inside of her cheek. 

Behind her, Nicole whispers, “Fender bender.”

“I know, right?” she returns just as quietly.

Soon, though, they leave her there—and for a moment, she almost wants them to stay because she’s having a lot of feelings she doesn’t quite know how to deal with—and Dolls looks at her expectantly, and she can almost hear him ask, _So, you just gonna stay at the other end of the room or…_   Maybe that one’s wishful thinking, but at least it makes her move.  She takes back her seat next to his bed.

“Did you tell me about hitching a ride on a freight train?” he asks, scowling.  “Isn’t that taking the whole ‘Wild West’ thing a little too seriously?”

What she _means_ to say is, “Oh, God, shut _up_ I’m still mad at you.”

What she _says_ is, “Shit, I love you, like, so much.”

She follows that up quickly with, “Um.”

His head tilts and his brow furrows and she’d _love_ to comment on that but her brain and her mouth seem to be having a fight at that exact moment.  “Am I higher than I thought or did I hear you right?”

“How believable would it be if I said it’s that first one?”

“Pretty sure that means it’s the second one,” he says with a growing grin.

“No, you’re definitely high,” she replies, face hot, but when he reaches for her, she can’t help but slide her palm against his.  “I’m glad you’re okay, too, you know.”

Huffing a soft laugh, he mumbles, “I mean, I’d gathered.  What with the love.”

“You’re an ass,” she glowers.

“An ass that you love,” he says pointedly.

“Your ass, yes, but you?  _Hate_ you.”  There’s something so easy about this, though, there’s no heat behind her words.  Besides, his thumb keeps dragging slowly over the backs of her fingers, which is proving to be a pretty effective strategy against the flames of her ire, or whatever.

“But you don’t, though,” he persists, still smiling.

Sighing, she tips her head back and tells the ceiling, “Okay, yes, I said that and I meant it.  So, there.”  Then, lips twisting, she demands, “Do you have anything to say on the subject that isn’t a gloat?”

“Nah,” he says, eyes glinting.

“You know, you still have, like, a _ton_ of broken bones—I could just slip and you’d be in a world of pain,” she challenges.

Catching his lip between his teeth, he brings her hand to his—so, so heavily bandaged—chest.  She’s suddenly really glad _she’s_ not the one hooked up to the monitor, because her heart is beating rabbit-fast somewhere inside her throat.  “Well,” he says.  “I definitely don’t hate you.”

“Such a dick,” she groans, snatching her hand away.

“Wait—wait,” he laughs, then he stops, gripping his ribs in a way that makes her feel guilty.  Some of that may show on her face, because he mumbles breathlessly, “I’m fine.  Really, maybe just not ready for jokes just yet.”  Chewing the inside of her cheek, her eyes fall to his shoulder until he dips his chin a little, dragging her gaze right back up.  “Listen, I love you—of course I love you.”

There it is, then.

It’s said with such stark honesty that she forgets how to breathe for a moment because she had a momentary lapse in sanity, but this is—this is real.  She thinks it’s real.  She’s pretty sure it’s real.  With a quick nod, she pushes to her feet and touches his cheek gingerly.  Slowly, in case she’s wrong—or, let’s be real, in case there’s a gas leak and she’s hallucinating—she leans into his space until she can feel his breath on her lips and waits for him to close the gap.  He does, and the kiss is gentle and slow.  She doesn’t press for more, shocked to be content with the soft pressure of his lips on hers and to brush her fingers from his cheek to his jaw to his neck.

“Dolls!  My guy!  Waverly said you were—” Jeremy bursts in and she yanks back.  “Awake.  Hi.  Sorry.”

His eyes flit, comically wide, between the two of them.  A giddy laugh forces its way out of her.

As she starts to pull away, Dolls grabs her hand with a quick, “Wait, stay.”

With a quiet smile, she drops back down into her chair.  “Wild demon horses couldn’t drag me away.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pbthpbhtpbhth so anon requested the following: "Fic prompt!!! Dolls gets hurt during 2x11, he's in hospital in 2x12 and an emotional wynonna goes to visit him and some feelings are revealed." _However_ I wasn't able to get it before the finale, for which I really apologize, but it did inspire this! I hope it's not too disappointing!
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Come by my [Tumblr](http://johnisntevendead.tumblr.com) if you wanna!


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